SIMposium: recent advancements in structured illumination microscopy - POSTPONED

Professor Rainer Heintzmann, studied at the University of Heidelberg and worked as a postdoctoral fellow at the Max Planck Institute of biophysical Chemistry in Göttingen and as a group at the Randall Division, King’s College London. He is currently professor of physical chemistry at the Friedrich-Schiller University Jena, and heads the microscopy research unit at the Leibniz Institute of Photonic Technology in Jena, Germany. His research focuses on imaging cellular function at high resolution and developing techniques to measure multidimensional information in small biological objects such as cells, cellular organelles or other small structures of interest. Techniques of interest are for example structured illumination, image inversion interferometry, image scanning microscopy, optical photon reassignment, and pointillism. A further interest is in computer-based reconstruction and inverse modelling methods.

Dr Lothar Schermelleh completed his PhD in 2003 at the Ludwig Maximilians University Munich under the supervision of Professor Thomas Cremer. Between 2003 and 2011, he worked as a postdoctoral researcher/lecturer in Epigenetics and Bioimaging at the Faculty of Biology, Ludwig Maximilians University Munich, with advisor Professor Heinrich Leonhardt. In 2005 and 2007, Lothar was a visiting scientist with Professor John W Sedat at the University of California, San Francisco. Since 2011, he has been a Micron Senior Research Fellow/Principle Investigator at the Department of Biochemistry, University of Oxford.

After doing an apprenticeship as an electrician Benedict Diederich started studying electrical engineering at the University for Applied Science Cologne. A specialisation in optics and an internship at Nikon Microscopy Japan pointed him to the interdisciplinary field of microscopy. After working for Zeiss he started his PhD in the Heintzmann Lab at the Leibniz IPHT Jena, where he focusses on bringing cutting edge research to everybody by relying on tailored image processing and low-cost optical setups. Part of his PhD program took place at the Photonics Center at the Boston University in the Tian Lab. A recent contribution was the open-source optical toolbox UC2 (You-See-Too) which tries to democratise science by making cutting-edge affordable and available to everyone, everywhere.

Ilaria Testa completed her PhD between 2006–2009 at the University of Genoa (Italy). Between 2009–2014 she worked as a Postdoc Researcher in the group of the Nobel Laureate Professor SW Hell at the MPI-BPC in Göttingen (Germany). Since 2015 Testa has been conducting independent research at the Science for Life Laboratory as Faculty at the Royal Institute of Technology (KTH, Stockholm, Sweden). The goal of Testa’s group is to develop the novel paradigms made available by super-resolution microscopy to address contemporary challenges in biophysics and neuroscience. To achieve this goal they have pushed forward the quantitative aspect of live cell imaging by setting-up and applying new concepts of parallelized and smart target-switching in STED and RESOLFT nanoscopies. They have developed MoNaLISA, smartRESOLFT and automated STED, which aim for the precise identification of populations of neuronal proteins and organelles depending on their 3D localization, abundance and dynamics inside their native environment.

The focus of Professor Cremer's laboratory is to develop and apply advanced light microscopy methods to elucidate the functional nanostructure of the cell nucleus. Among the many important benefits expected are contributions to biomedical research, eg, the identification of cancer cells, or mechanisms of genome instability and repair. A fundamental problem to achieve these goals has been the resolution limit of about 200 nm in conventional light microscopy which for a century appeared to be due to basic laws of Physics and hence unsurmountable. Professor Cremer's laboratory has contributed substantially to overcome this essential road block to nuclear nanostructure analysis and to conceive and develop super-resolution fluorescence microscopy approaches in order to stretch and eventually break this limit. Since the mid-1990s, they have developed and applied various techniques of wide field based super-resolution, such as structured illumination and localisation microscopy for nuclear nanostructure analysis using standard fluorophores, with a best light optical resolution in the low nanometre range. 

Dr Abrahamsson's lab at UCSC invents, constructs, and employs new types of optical microscopy systems for live 3D super-resolution imaging. They are specialized in multifocus microscopy, structured illumination microscopy, diffractive Fourier optics and nanofabrication. Their instruments are made available to biological research groups by commissioning in open access academic imaging facilities as well as in individual laboratories.

Talley Lambert received his PhD in Neurobiology at the University of Washington and is now a microscopist and lecturer at Harvard Medical School. His recent work has focused on light sheet and structured illumination microscopy with an emphasis on teaching and building computational tools for easing downstream image handling and processing pipelines.

Professor Ilan Davis' research career has been focused on elucidating novel post-transcriptional mechanisms of gene expression using Drosophila as a model system. His group made important contribution to their understanding of the role of mRNA localisation and translational regulation during pattern formation in oogenesis and embryogenesis. For example, they uncovered the first example of Dynein transporting mRNA and anchoring it statically. They also elucidated the role of processing bodies in the fate of mRNAs in the oocyte and early embryo. More recently, his group has been focusing on the role of similar mechanisms and factors in synaptic plasticity and neural stem cell development. Their approach has often involved interdisciplinary research and collaboration, usually including advanced imaging methods, computational techniques and most recently medium throughput and genome-wide approaches, as well as machine learning based analysis. Professor Davis' role as director of Micron, enhances the group's ability to develop technology and adds considerable value to the lab's research output.  

Professor Thomas Huser is a professor of Physics in the Department of Physics at the University of Bielefeld, Germany. Professor Huser started his scientific career as a postdoctoral fellow at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in Livermore, California (USA), where he became scientific capability leader for Nano-Biophotonics. In 2004 he became a professor in the School of Medicine and was also named Chief Scientist for the NSF Center for Biophotonics at the University of California, Davis (USA). From 2009–2011 he was also a guest professor at the University of Tromso in Norway. In 2011 he moved to his current position at the University of Bielefeld. His research interests are ultrasensitive optical microscopy and spectroscopy applied to biomedical problems with high relevance for human health. He has published more than 130 peer-reviewed research publications with well over 6000 citations, holds 4 patents and has written 8 book chapters.

Dr Dong Li received a BE in optical engineering from Zhejiang University, Hangzhou, China in 2002, and completed his PhD in electronic and computer engineering at Hong Kong University of Science and Technology in 2011. He spent the next four years for postdoctoral training with Dr Eric Betzig at Janelia Research Campus, Howard Hughes Medical Institute, after that he joined Institute of Biophysics as principle investigator. Dr Li’s group focuses on developing novel optical imaging methods, which enable us to interrogate the dynamics of biological processes with unprecedented spatiotemporal resolution.

Dr Müller is the lead developer of the fairSIM.org project, which started out as software solution for the data processing required in SIM, and grew into a collection of resources for the SIM community. Today, it provides hardware blueprints, control and reconstruction software, as well as raw data samples and educational material. Dr Müller's scientific career started as a PhD in high energy physics. They then switched fields, and worked as a post-doctoral researcher in the group of Professor Huser, Bielefeld University, where they started the fairSIM project. Dr Müller has since held positions as a scientific software developer at the Micron Advanced Imaging Facility in Oxford, and as a Marie Sklodowska-Curie post-doctoral research fellow in the group of Professor Dedecker, KU Leuven.

Sandrine Lévêque-Fort is a CNRS Researcher Director at the Institute of molecular science (ISMO) in Paris Saclay University. She obtained her PhD on the development of a new acousto-optic imaging approach for imaging through scattering media in the Optical Lab of ESPCI in Paris. She then became a postdoctoral fellow in the physics department of Imperial College, where she started to develop time resolved fluorescence microscopy but also structured illumination strategy. She joined the CNRS in 2001 to develop different strategies to improve spatial and temporal resolution for fluorescence microscopy, by implementing new configurations or used plasmonics substrates to engineered fluorescence emission.  Since 2009, she has proposed various approaches to take advantage of supercritical angle fluorescence (SAF) emission as an alternative intrinsic tool given by the fluorophore itself to access axial information. In wide field microscopy this allows a dual depth imaging without any photon loss while preserving ideal sectioning for membrane imaging. In combination with super-resolution microscopy techniques (DONALD/DAISY), these new approaches permit to reveal quantitatively the 3D cellular nanoarchitecture. Since 2016, she has combined structured excitation with single molecule localization. By introducing a time signature within the localization process, this technique called ModLoc permits to retrieve the fluorophores’ information thanks to the phase of their modulated emission and benefits of an enhanced localization.

Dr Carlas Smith’s research concerns the development of high-resolution microscopes and optical fabrication systems. His research transcends the boundaries between physics, biology and engineering to visualize cellular processes in a wide range of biological samples. He breaks away from the traditional design philosophy of mere addition of optimal components into a system, to instead apply optimal information processing for all components present in the system. His methodology uses adaptive elements to maximize the recorded information content of the optical system, which he utilizes to reconstruct an image with super-resolution. This has led to advances in biomedical imaging, including in confocal, multiphoton and wide-field microscopy. His research is showing how adaptive optics can transform these microscopes from tools for imaging cells to the visualization of thick- and live-tissue specimens.

Kirti Prakash is a computer scientist by training (Bachelors and Masters degree) but a biologist at heart (PhD degree). Kirti aspires to develop new imaging and computational methods to solve the conundrums of chromosome structure and function. He did his PhD at Heidelberg University under the tutelage of Christoph Cremer. Here, he developed a new method to image DNA in high-resolution. The method led to the first high-resolution images of the epigenetic landscape of meiotic chromosomes and mechanisms behind chromosome condensation. After his PhD, he spent about a year in the lab of Joe Gall, where he found that single-molecule switching can be achieved with a mercury lamp. The findings led to the first superresolution images with a low-cost epifluorescence microscope and co-application of STED and SMLM on the same biological sample. Since 2018, Kirti has been working at the University of Cambridge. Firstly, in the group of David Rowitch, he contributed to the development of a high-content imaging pipeline to quantify single-cell gene expression. Presently, in the lab of Dave Klenerman and Ernest Laue, he is setting up single-objective light-sheet microscopy to study the organisation of chromosomes.

Liang Gao received his BS and MS degree from the Tsinghua University in 2000 and 2003. He received his PhD degree with Dr R Graham Cooks from the Purdue University in 2009. He did his postdoctoral research with Dr Eric Betzig in the Janelia Research Campus of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute from 2010 to 2013. He was an assistant professor in the State University of New York at Stony Brook from 2014 to 2016 and a lead research scientist in the Intelligent Imaging Innovations, Inc. from 2017 to 2018. He joined the Westlake University as an associate professor in 2019. 

Sjoerd Stallinga obtained his PhD degree (1995) at the University of Nijmegen after graduating at that university (1993) on a theoretical study in liquid crystal physics. He has worked from 1995–2008 as senior scientist and project leader at Philips Research in Eindhoven on the various fields in applied optics. In 2009 he joined the Delft University of Technology as associate professor in the Department of Imaging Physics, and got promoted to full professor in 2018. Current research interests are in the analysis, design and realization of computational optical imaging systems. The application focus is on biomedical imaging and microscopy in general and optical nanoscopy and digital pathology in particular. Sjoerd Stallinga has published 65 peer-reviewed papers, 24 Philips internal publications, and is inventor on 33 granted US patents. 

Andrew York trained in math and physics, but aspires to be an inventor. His graduate studies involved "air lithography", using high-intensity lasers to sculpt tiny transient optics made out of explosions. He worked on hypersonic engines for a year at Lockheed Martin, before joining Hari Shroff's group at the NIH. His most useful project at the NIH developed the technology used by the Visitech iSIM and the Yokogawa SoRa. After the NIH, Andrew joined Calico Labs, where he tries to share his team's microscopy technique development as rapidly as possible via open science. See andrewgyork.github.io for examples.

Jonathan Liu received degrees in mechanical engineering at Princeton (BSE, 1999) and Stanford (MS, 2000 and PhD, 2005). He was a postdoctoral fellow in the department of electrical engineering (Ginzton Labs) and the Molecular Imaging Program at Stanford (2005–2009), and was later appointed as an instructor within the Stanford University School of Medicine (2009–2010). After spending four years as an assistant professor in the biomedical engineering department at SUNY Stony Brook (2010–2014), Dr Liu is now the Bryan McMinn endowed associate professor of mechanical engineering at the University of Washington in Seattle, with an adjunct appointment in the department of pathology. Dr Liu’s work has been funded by the NIH (NCI, NIDCR, NIBIB), NSF, Department of Defense, Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, and other agencies/industry. Dr Liu’s molecular biophotonics laboratory (www.me.washington.edu/liu) develops optical strategies for improving the detection, diagnosis, and treatment of diseases. Dr Liu is a cofounder and advisor for LightSpeed Microscopy Inc.

Colin Sheppard is Honorary Professorial Fellow at the University of Wollongong, Australia; External Collaborator and Visiting Scientist with the Italian Institute of Technology, Genoa, Italy; and Supernumerary Fellow of Pembroke College Oxford. He obtained his first degree and PhD from University of Cambridge. He was University Lecturer in Engineering Science at the University of Oxford; Professor of Physics at the University of Sydney; and Professor and Head in the Department of Bioengineering at National University of Singapore. He has held visiting positions at different institutions, including UC Berkeley, MIT, EPFL, TU-Delft and Tokyo University. He developed an early laser microscope (1975), patented scanning microscopy using Bessel beams (1977), published the first demonstration of scanning two-photon microscopy (by SHG) (1977), proposed two-photon fluorescence and CARS microscopy (1978), launched the first commercial confocal microscope (1982), and developed the first confocal microscope with computer control and storage (1983). 

Professor Ilan Davis' research career has been focused on elucidating novel post-transcriptional mechanisms of gene expression using Drosophila as a model system. His group made important contribution to their understanding of the role of mRNA localisation and translational regulation during pattern formation in oogenesis and embryogenesis. For example, they uncovered the first example of Dynein transporting mRNA and anchoring it statically. They also elucidated the role of processing bodies in the fate of mRNAs in the oocyte and early embryo. More recently, his group has been focusing on the role of similar mechanisms and factors in synaptic plasticity and neural stem cell development. Their approach has often involved interdisciplinary research and collaboration, usually including advanced imaging methods, computational techniques and most recently medium throughput and genome-wide approaches, as well as machine learning based analysis. Professor Davis' role as director of Micron, enhances the group's ability to develop technology and adds considerable value to the lab's research output.  

Balpreet S Ahluwalia is working as an Associate Professor at the Department of Physics and Technology, UiT The Arctic University of Norway. He is also affiliated with Department of Clinical Sciences, Intervention and Technology (CLINTEC), Karolinska Institute in Sweden. Ahluwalia leads a cross-disciplinary optical nanoscopy research group that focus towards the development of multi-modality and high-throughput optical nanoscopy and label-free microscopy/nanoscopy and its biological application in several physiologically and clinically relevant bio-applications such as molecular cancer research, vascular biology, perinatology and pathology. Ahluwalia has PhD in Electrical Engineering (majored in photonics) in 2007 from Nanyang Technological University, Singapore and has been visiting researcher/professors at the CBST (Centre of Biophotonics of Science and Technology), University of California Davis (2012) and at ORC (opto-electronics research centre), University of Southampton (2008, 2019). Ahluwalia is also the Group Leader of Ultrasound, Microwave and Optics Group at the department. Recently, the UMO group has established international visibility and has attracted 4 ERC projects (3 ERC St. Grant, 1 ERC PoC), several EU (MSCA) and Norwegian Research Council funded projects in the areas related to nano-photonics, optical sensors and optical nanoscopy.

Marco Fritzsche leads the 'Biophysical Immunology' (BPI) group at the MRC-Human Immunology-Unit at the University of Oxford. Having studied physics and mathematics in Germany, Marco learned about the biophysics of the cellular actin cytoskeleton during his PhD programme in Guillaume Charras's laboratory at University College London, United Kingdom. During his Post-doctoral training in the Nano-Immunology group of Christian Eggeling at Oxford and in close collaboration Eric Betzig at HHMI-Janelia-Farm, Marco joined state of the art optical-imaging-modes and computation analysis methods. The BPI laboratory makes now use of his steep transition from theoretical physics to bio-immunity and addresses highly-interdisciplinary biomedical research questions from a bio-physical perspective.

Alexandra Fragola is a graduate from the Institute of Optics Graduate School in Palaiseau, and received her PhD in fluorescence near field microscopy, in the optics department of ESPCI in Paris, under the supervision of Lionel Aigouy and Claude Boccara. In 2005, she obtained an assistant professor position at Sorbonne University (Paris) and joined the multidisciplinary group Synthesis and Imaging of Inorganic Probes at ESPCI. Since then, she has been developing fluorescence microscopes for enhanced resolution imaging of living samples: structured illumination microscopy, adaptive optics, time-gated imaging, non linear endomicroscopy.